DoubleTake: The face of God

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Not only does it contain the blood stains from crucifixion, but it bears the faint full-body image of a man who was tortured and crucified.

Les Sillers (0:32)

From WORLD Radio, this is Double Take. I'm Les Sillers.

We recently sent Gretchen Whittington to Los Angeles to visit a museum dedicated to the Shroud of Turin. She's a graduate of our Patrick Henry College journalism program. She spoke with a bunch of people.

Gretchen Whittington (0:47)

So one that I always ask everyone is, how would you introduce the Shroud to somebody who's never heard of it before, or just is curious?

SPEAKER_5 (0:54)

Like this is a burial cloth. It's linen cloth. It's, there is a front and back image of a naked man, which many believe to be Jesus. So many believe that.

Bob Rucker (1:04)

They'll see these bright lines coming down.

Then their eyes will get big. And they'll say, oh, I see an image in between.

Cheryl White (1:12)

I think it is an invitation for every single person to enter into the sort of the limitless, the limitless study of this, the mystery of it and to encounter that in their own way.

Charles Murray (1:27)

Do you want to meet Jesus?

Les Sillers (1:34)

The Shroud of Turin is supposedly the burial cloth of Jesus Christ. The Gospels say that his disciples wrapped him in a burial cloth after his crucifixion and then placed him in the tomb.

John saw burial cloths when he first entered the empty tomb. John 20 says, Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying there and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen cloths, but folded up in a place by itself. The Shroud is a flax linen sheet about 14 feet long and 3.5 feet wide. It's now kind of a tan colour with dark blotches and faint lines. If you look carefully, you can see the double image of a crucified man, maybe 5 foot 10 or so. His front is on one half of the Shroud and his back is on the other. Heads toward the centre. It looks like someone stretched the cloth out, placed a body on one half and then folded the cloth over from the head down.

Except, and this is a major part of the puzzle, the image is inverted. It's like someone imposed a photographic negative of the body onto the cloth. Nobody recognized this until the first time it was photographed in 1898 by an Italian amateur photographer.

Jeremiah Johnston, a Shroud expert and president of the Christian Thinker Society, told that story at a World Economic Forum event last year.

Jeremiah Johnston (2:54)

And so in 1898, when Sikandapia is taking a photograph down in the Turin Cathedral, the St. Giovanni Cathedral in Turin, he takes a picture. The exposures took 14 minutes and 20 minutes. He had to bring in a generator, one of the first flash photography. He takes the photo and in the dark room, this is what he sees on the screen, and he never more appropriately utters the following three words, Oh my God.

He thought he was looking at the face of Jesus. In fact, I want to encourage everyone to do something.

Les Sillers (3:29)

And that, of course, is the question. When we look at the Shroud of Turin, is that an image of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, the one who said, I and the Father are one? What Pius saw, you too can find with a simple internet search. The image of a man shows up clearly on the negatives. A body with facial features, hair, mustache and beard, muscles, and even wounds consistent with someone who had been crucified. A lot of wounds, 700 of them. The man's large eyes are closed. His hair, parted in the middle, falls down almost to his shoulders. He has a strong nose and a narrow face. He doesn't look scared or like he's in pain at all. He just looks kind of noble.

Some of the AI-generated images based on the Shroud do kind of resemble the actor from The Chosen.

A lot of Christians, especially Protestants, would say it doesn't matter if the Shroud is real. You don't need things like relics to have faith. You just need to remember the solas. Scripture alone, faith alone, grace alone, Christ alone. As World Opinions editor Albert Mulder once wrote, The obsession with relics comes at a grave cost. The confusion of the Gospel, the marginalization of Christ, and the subversion of the Bible sufficiency. And anyway, it's obviously a medieval fake. There's a long history of chicanery linked to the veneration of objects supposedly connected to Christ or a saint, especially in the Catholic tradition. John Calvin quipped in his 1543 treatise on relics that there are so many supposed splinters of the true cross littering up cathedrals and towns across Europe that they would fill a ship's cargo hold. On the other hand, Catholics have a long tradition and theology built around venerating relics and saints.